Page 4349 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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this is Stanhope in 2004—
will include a new 139-bed remand centre to replace the Belconnen Remand Centre and the Symonston Temporary Remand Centre. It will include a 175-bed facility for sentenced prisoners and a 60-bed transitional release centre for low-risk prisoners …
So they have said, “Right; these are the bed numbers you are going to need—374.” He said: “The way this is going to be built, the way it is going to be designed, you are going to have a remand centre, you are going to have somewhere for sentenced prisoners, and you are going to have somewhere for transitional release.” That sounded pretty reasonable. It was probably at the lower estimate, but it sounded pretty reasonable.
But what happened? The project ran into trouble. This mob were desperate to get it open on the day before the caretaker period, I think on 11 September 2008. They were desperate to get it open. The budget blew out. It went from the $110 million that had been promised to $130 million. The budget was blowing out. They said: “What are we going to do? Let us make it 300 beds.” They cut the capacity to 300 beds when all the advice said it was too small. We have heard the consequence of that. We have just heard it from the Official Visitor.
So they have built this jail, with 300 beds. Was that going to be big enough? Clearly it was not, and the government knew that. But when the minister, Simon Corbell, was asked about whether this jail was going to be big enough, he said, “This jail will have capacity for 25 years in its existing bed configuration.” Why is it that the minister got all this advice that said you need a jail that is going to have 374 as a minimum and then, because of budget blowouts and so on, he is in this place saying, “No; for 25 years it is going to be big enough.” We know it was not big enough, because it was full almost the day it opened. They have been cramming in bunk beds to the point where, as I understand it, no more bunk beds can be actually fitted into the place. It is bursting at its seams.
What to do about it? What about the suggestions so far from Minister Rattenbury? We have heard one concept of bracelets for prisoners, and that they would be released into the community. I reject that as a proposal, because if the judiciary decides someone needs a custodial sentence, they should be in the jail; we should not be saying, “Let’s get some prisoners out of here simply because it is overcrowded.” That is not an appropriate response. The other thing that we can do, of course, is send prisoners to New South Wales. I think there is some good evidence that that would work. We did it before; it was a lot cheaper. And there is some real—
Mr Rattenbury interjecting—
MR HANSON: You get all this stuff from Mr Rattenbury and the government saying, “Oh, you can’t send them to New South Wales. It will be terrible. It’s the dark ages in Goulburn jail.” But the reality is that when you have a situation where sentenced prisoners are mixed with remand, which the Official Visitor says is a no-no, and you have got protected prisoners, male, female, maximum, minimum, what you can actually do is send people to particular jails which have—
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